All Bad Girls Go to Arkham
by BiteMeTechie
Summary: *CAT* Surely you didn't think that three intrepid henchgirls could avoid the long arm of the law forever, did you? Oh, you naive thing, you...
1. The Premise

CATverse A/N: Don't know what the CATverse is? Check out catverse. com to find out.

This story takes place in arc five.

A/N: Once upon a time, the Captain and I tried to break into an asylum for the criminally insane. We failed, of course (not once, but _three_ times!) but it makes a great story to tell at parties. It also makes a great basis for the following.

--

"You are all hereby sentenced to ten years in Arkham Asylum, or until such time you are deemed fit for reintegration into society."

The gavel slammed down with all the finality of an executioner's axe hitting the chopping block.

"Ten years."

"Ten _years_?"

"Years? As in three hundred sixty five days _years_ years?"

"With the exception of leap years in which there are three hundred sixty-six, yes," the judge replied smartly, gathering up his paperwork and setting in order. "Bailiffs, remove the defendants."

Even as they were none too gently escorted out of the courtroom, the Captain, Al and Techie were having a bit of a hard time coming to grips with their sentences. Oh, they'd been in Arkham before, just never all three of them at the same time. At least when one of them was on the outside, there was a _guarantee_ that they'd be busted out somewhat promptly.

The Scarecrow, on the other hand, might just conveniently 'forget' for a few months…

When the trio had been captured by Superman (and oh, hadn't _that_ made Al happy as a wet hornet), they figured they were pretty much screwed until they were handed off to a few incompetent police. Sadly, the Metropolis Police Department wasn't as full of bungling rookies as they'd hoped and the opportunity to escape didn't present itself as anticipated. Even the Gotham PD was on the ball this time, which was most surprising of all and they were interrogated thoroughly before being sent--separately--to the county lockup. It had only taken a week to see them pushed to trial for grand larceny and the trial had only taken three days.

It was as if the universe was conspiring against them at every turn--almost like the police were _purposely_ forcing them through the system as quickly and efficiently as possible.

As they were dazedly pushed through the doors to the courtroom, a couple of flashbulbs exploded, blinding the girls. They weren't exactly front page news--not like the Joker or even the Scarecrow--but they were definitely tabloid fodder. A few months earlier, after _The Very Secret Memoirs of a Henchgirl_ had been exposed as a fraud, the hunt for the real author of the _genuine_ bestseller was back on. Even now, there was a certain amount of interest in who'd written it and the sensationalist hacks who had no reservations about chasing the lead were here. After all, the first _Memoirs_ had been written by an employee of the Scarecrow. It was only logical that one of these three was responsible.

"Will you be keeping a diary in Arkham?"

"Have you signed any book deals yet?"

"Which of you is dating the Scarecrow?"

"There are rumors of an Avant Garde film based on _Memoirs_, do you approve?"

Without waiting for them to blink the stars from their vision, they were ushered through the small cluster of reporters, outside and then down the courthouse steps. They were unceremoniously shoved into an armored van, cuffed to its walls and then locked inside.

The moment the doors slammed shut, they all looked at each other and cringed.

"We have to make a plan," Techie began.

Al cut her off. "They aren't going to let us stay together in Arkham."

"Only an _idiot_ would let us stay together in Arkham."

"All the more reason to get the planning stages out of the way _now_," Techie said with maddening logic. "Besides, you _know_ Arkham. There's always a way out. I mean, look how the Joker escapes on a regular basis."

"He's usually got Harley on the outside," Al replied in a grumble. "And if not, he's got henches to boss around. We don't have that kind of pull. We're just the hired help."

"So? Maybe we can convince someone _else_ with pull to get us out. Say, have you talked to--"

The Captain glared at her friend. "We are _not_ using the Joker."

"Why not? He likes me."

"Uh huh, he likes Harley, too. Harley who, need I remind you, is often _tossed off buildings when convenient_."

"How about Jervis, then?" Techie tried, turning to Al. "He's inside, isn't he?"

"Not this week," Al muttered darkly. "Edward is still on the outside, too. But I doubt we can expect a daring rescue."

"With Eddums, we might."

The Captain didn't look convinced. "One man trying to bust out _three_ convicts? The probability of success is pretty much nil. He's smart enough to know that."

"We can't call in any favors, can we?"

"Nobody owes us." Al blew her bangs out of her eyes. "Nobody except Squish and Eddums."

"How about Penguin? Or Scarface? Or--"

"We're not as high up on the food chain as you'd like to think, Ops. We've got three _reliably_ friendly contacts in Gotham. The others are neutral at best and sworn enemies at worst."

Techie frowned. "We're alone."

"Well, we _do_ have each other."

"Yeah, until they separate us."

"You're so cheerful, Al," Techie snapped, her optimism finally spent. "Truly, a ray of sunshine."

"Oh, stuff it, Techie," Al said shortly. "It's not _my_ fault we all got caught by Admiral Stick-Up-His-Ass."

Techie just grumbled under her breath and glared at nothing in particular. She always got sulky when holes were punched in the balloon of her brightness. How dare _logic_ get in the way of her Carebear disposition? "But I don't _want_ to go to Arkham."

"Ops, we're criminals. It happens."

"It shouldn't."

"Right. The bad guys in the black hats should always win. Never mind the statistics or the fact that if we _did_ always win, that it wouldn't be any fun at all."

"You're just grumpy that Squish isn't going to come rushing in like the white knight."

Techie's face scrunched up. "He couldn't carry that much armor without tipping over. I do wish he'd make an _effort_, though."

"He'd only get hurt, captured and then where would we be? All of us, in Arkham. God, can you _imagine_ group therapy?"

The bushy haired henchgirl groaned openly. "Therapy. I forgot they're going to make us go to _therapy_. I _hate_ therapy."

"Look on the bright side," Captain said with a smile, "it might be group _hug_ therapy. Hugs!"

"I wouldn't look so chipper if I were you," Al replied. "As of last week, Mr. Freeze is in the joint."

Captain's face fell. "Crap."


	2. The Villain

The ride to Arkham was long and tedious. The girls tried conversation once or twice (well, Techie tried--she did so hate those awkward, stretched silences) but each preferred to be left alone with her thoughts. Al, for her part, was wondering what exactly was going on with Jonathan. The usual sentiments: _Is he okay? Does he need a sandwich? A hug? A splint? A kidney?; _Captain was quietly and calmly laying out Arkham in her head as best she could remember it, mapping all possible escape routes and Techie was silently reciting Marc Antony's speech from Julius Caesar to keep herself calm. If they had been headed to a regular old prison, she might have been a bit less edgy, but Arkham--no matter how many times you'd been there before--was not a nice place to visit.

Generally, henchmen and others of their ilk--villainous hired help, as it were--were not usually put in Arkham. Most criminals in Gotham--the pickpockets, the conmen, the bruisers--were sane. It wasn't common practice to just pick up any old ruffian off the street and toss them in Arkham, even if they worked for one of the costumed villains. As a matter of fact, the first time that each of the Scarecrow's girls had been arrested, she'd been put in with the general population of Gotham's female penitentiary.

Needless to say, that had gone badly.

With a sharpened spork, Al had stabbed a fellow inmate and then attempted to do a lively jig on her ribcage while singing about Pretty Irish Girls. The ensuing meeting with the prison psychiatrist had revealed tendencies that leaned toward sociopathy and an anti-social personality. Bingo, bango, she'd been transferred to Arkham.

Captain, who'd been tossed into solitary confinement in the dark, had conducted a sing-along of 'It's Raining Men', in a falsetto voice, using her prison issue socks as puppets. She had then tackled the guard who brought her dinner and declared she just _loved_ a man in uniform, never-mind-you're-not-a-man-my-point-still-stands.

When she'd recovered from the nightstick beating, she too was moved to Arkham.

Techie had remained calm, for the most part, until the cabin fever had gotten to her about three days into her sentence. She snapped during dinner, climbed up on one of the mess hall tables brandishing two plastic dinner trays and screamed at the top of her lungs about Attica and how they'd never take her alive, fight the power, down with the man.

When the riot broke out, the guards were _not_ amused.

Of course, it wasn't as easy as all that to be declared insane in Gotham--insane enough for Arkham, anyway--but the extensive psychological testing that they'd been exposed to after their prison 'episodes' had determined that they were probably better off in a secure medical facility. Arkham was the only place equipped to deal with violent, criminally insane inmates, and they fit the profile of violent and criminally insane, so it was now their default destination when they were arrested.

The armored van bounced more violently the further away it got from the heart of Gotham. The roads got rougher the closer they got to the city's outskirts--most of the city budget went to keeping Arkham intact, roads were not a high priority out in the boonies--and the three women were being tossed around inside the van as much as their positions would allow. With their hands cuffed to the metal of the vehicle itself, every time a particularly brutal speed bump threw them off their seats, their arms were jerked painfully taut.

Finally, after nearly an hour's travel, the van came to a stop outside the gates of the asylum. The girls had just enough time to look at each other and mutter reassurances before the doors were flung wide. Two burly, muscle-bound guards were waiting, looking severe. The Captain was dragged out of the van first and she put up a token struggle. It was more to save face than to accomplish anything. She might have had thighs of steel, but her upper body strength was less than impressive.

Techie and Al were left alone while the Captain was taken into the building. They exchanged a look.

"Techie."

"Al."

Al's voice was toneless. "Don't try to butter up the Joker."

Techie's reply was just as flat. "Don't try to kill Poison Ivy."

They were silent for a moment and then, in unison, they both warned solemnly, "And don't eat the peas."

Little did they know that the asylum's cuisine was the least of their worries...

---

Christine Dean was a blight on the journalistic community of Gotham City. A mediocre writer with a taste for the sensational, she'd made a name for herself by speculating about the sexual escapades of the city's heroes and villains. She was the only gossip columnist with the brass to write, at length, about whether or not Batman and Catwoman had more between them than just passing flirtation or if Poison Ivy and Ra's al Ghul were shagging like bunnies. Miss Dean's colleagues scorned her, either because they didn't respect her hack work or because they were angry they hadn't thought of it first. Despite the fact she wasn't about to win any awards, her readership was rather impressive--even though it mostly consisted of the bored housewife set, the same set who loved bodice rippers and soap operas--and without a doubt, she had a gift for marketing herself, being a shrewd, shrew of a business woman who loved the spotlight almost as much as she loved plowing people down with the power her position afforded her.

Generally, the rogues didn't pay any attention to her. She wrote for a local tabloid with miniscule circulation numbers and they had better things to do than to defend their reputations on so small a scale--but every once in a while, she wrote a particularly scandalous item and someone would pay her a visit. Honestly, that sort of thing had only happened once--and it was _only_ Killer Moth who tried, unsuccessfully, to blow up her office--but she milked the experience for all it was worth. People in Gotham knew how unstable the city's villains could be and, being the clever woman she was, she used their fear to her advantage. If something she wrote could maybe, possibly, _perhaps_ incite the Joker's wrath, for example...

"You've heard of freedom of the press, haven't you, Doctor?"

Doctor Leland gave the busty brunette in her apricot colored suit a flat, tired look. "Miss Dean, I appreciate your zealousness in seeking a story, but I don't have to grant you access to my patients. Arkham Asylum is federally funded but that does _not_ make the building open to the public."

Christine rested her fists on the good doctor's desk, flashing a patch of generous, silicon enhanced cleavage as she leaned forward. "Doctor, I _always_ get my story and I have a deadline to meet. Now, you can either allow me to speak with some of your less violent patients--which is all I'm asking--or I can go home and type up a little something that doesn't exactly cast you in a favorable light."

Leland's response was dispassionate. "Miss Dean, I work at Arkham Asylum, day in, day out. I've been offered the option of giving up my position six times over as many years and I haven't done so. You can't threaten me."

"I wasn't threatening you," Christine replied, unclenching her fists and letting her perfectly manicured peach colored nails stroke the desktop. "But the fact of the matter is, Doctor, I have the power of the press on my side. The pen is mightier, etcetera and so on. If I were to write a scathing exposé about you...how many people would pay attention? How many would start sniffing around if it was suddenly revealed that you have a Mercedes stashed in your garage?"

"I drive a Volvo, Miss Dean."

"Oh, _details_." Christine stood up fully and folded her arms across her chest. "Details don't matter if you spin the story just right."

"Details, Miss Dean? You mean the _truth_?"

"Truth is relative, Doctor." She gave Leland the grin she thought looked particularly naughty. The one that made men pant after her at cocktail parties. "You work at Arkham...there's no way your past is squeaky clean. Let me lay out the scenario like I see it. I write a series of articles, chalk full of juicy goodies--"

"Lies."

"Again with semantics. _Do_ find a new shtick, Doctor, the old one is boring me." She snapped her fingers haughtily. "The point is, if I write a series about you and..._embellish_ the facts a little, you're going to have the IRS breathing down your neck in addition to the villains in your oh-so-very-capable care. It doesn't take much to convince some G-Man that you're dipping into the asylum's till. This is Gotham, after all...we practically _manufacture_ corruption. Before you know it, you're up to your neck in an audit, gumming up the works and uncovering all sorts of secrets Arkham's got buried. The Joker might not scare you, Doctor Leland, but I'll bet Uncle Sam does."

Leland stood, straightening up to her full height and though she wasn't particularly threatening, Christine had to fight the urge to take a step back. This was a woman confident in her abilities _without_ a thick mask of make-up and flattering designer clothes. Her confidence came from within--not from her looks--and Christine didn't know how to deal with that sort of strength. She'd spent too much time with the shallow socialite crowd, making conversation about Gucci versus Ferrigamo; _real_ women with backbone were foreign and more than a little intimidating.

"Miss Dean, thank you for your visit, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to deny your request…"

In an instant, Christine's rage overcame her trepidation. "You dare say no to _me_? _Me_?!"

"I dare, Miss Dean," Leland said smoothly. "Where angels fear to tread, there go I."

The furious reporter snatched up her purse and slung the strap over her shoulder, indignantly adjusting her suit jacket. "We'll just see about that!"

She turned, her white pumps click-clacking across the linoleum as she made her way to the door and yanked it open. Christine tossed her long hair over her shoulder and looked back, her muddy brown eyes flashing. "Mark my words, Doctor Leland, if I have to get a court order to do it, I _will_ interview the Scarecrow's henchgirls!"

**SLAM!**


	3. Session One: The Captain

_A/N: First, a brief apology for my dropping off the face of the planet. I was off henchgirling at a theatre festival in Orlando, where I unfortunately lost a jump drive with every single scrap of my writing on it. I mourned for awhile, bashed my head into a few walls and then got back to work rewriting everything all over again. Needless to say, it's been a __**long**__ few weeks. The summer will get longer still when I work two more festivals in Indianapolis and Vancouver, so don't expect much from me for awhile, 'kay?_

_Second: Writing this would have been easier if I'd had "The Great Escape" lying around. Third, I owe a brief, somewhat harried fist-shaking "Curse-You-Richards!" thanks to that mysterious figure, Michigan J. Bowler, for showing me a coked up, metaphysical tragicomedy set in a military insane asylum. He knows the one I mean. The bastard._

_And finally, major points to those of you who can identify the inspiration for the original characters housed herein--or at the very least, their names--and all the references sprinkled throughout. See how many you can spot!_

_---_

Believe it or not, the interior of Arkham Asylum was a great deal more intimidating than the exterior, which was quite a feat considering how forbidding the building was from a distance, much less close up. The gothic architecture was made up of sharp lines and jutting angles that felt unnatural, perhaps even one could go so far as to say unholy. When the girls had first arrived in Gotham and took a good look at the place, the Captain had commented that it was the sort of locale that could easily give even H.P. Lovecraft a case of the heebie-jeebies. It was true. Looking at pictures of the building was nothing like being face-to-face with it. On paper, it just looked interesting; in person, it looked as menacing as any building, real or fictional, ever had.

But stepping foot _inside_…now _that_ was like walking into the nastier haunted house ever conceived of by man. The air was always chilly, no matter how sweltering it may have been outside and the smell of sickness, slicked over with anesthetic, always made the Captain's stomach roll mutinously inside her. She may have acted all tough-as-nails, but 'Hospital Smell' always got to her a little bit.

After the first few minutes of being dragged into the building, she gave up struggling and just went limp, forcing the two guards on either side of her to haul her along, the toes of her shoes dragging along the sallow, yellowing linoleum and leaving black streaks behind them. Usually, she didn't put up much of a fight, cooperating with the system just to get things done a little faster; but today, for whatever reason, she was feeling rather petulant. Why should she make their jobs any easier?

The guards towed her to the reception desk--a bulletproof Plexiglass cage with a mild mannered looking guard inside, standing behind a slate gray counter stained with coffee rings--and came to a stop. The Captain took note of his nametag, which read 'B. West' and gave him the once over: five foot ten, Glasses, muddy brown hair in a very unfashionable, but still somehow flattering, bowl cut and muddy brown eyes to match. B. West didn't bother to look up from his copy of _Boudoir_ as the guard on the Captain's left barked, "Patient nine-two-four-eight. Stevenson comma Laura."

B. West leisurely picked up his bottle of Soylent Cola from the counter, took a sip and then hit the large red button that opened the inner doors of the asylum with an angry BUZZ. As the doors slid open, the guards tugged the Captain inside the hospital, dragged her down the labyrinthine hallways, past the comatose, past the Joker's and the Scarecrow's victims who were beyond all help and finally past the medical ward where critical care patients were kept under surveillance at all times. They didn't venture into the most secure part of Arkham--the place where big name criminals like Poison Ivy and Two-Face were housed--a henchgirl with borderline personality disorders just wasn't that high a priority.

A block of cells was set aside in Arkham for those people who were a threat, but not a particularly _large_ threat without outside help. People like Albert Wesker were kept here, people who had no chance of escape without some brawny, muscle-y allies to back them up. It followed, then, that this was where someone like the Captain belonged.

Without ceremony, the guards dragged the Captain to her cell and practically tossed her inside. She staggered, trying to keep her balance, and stumbled toward the mattress. Her shin caught the very edge of the bed frame and she yelped, falling face first onto the bed. The guards laughed at her and slid the bulletproof, shatter-resistant clear plastic door to her cell closed. She rolled onto her side, clutching her shin, and glared at them. They smirked. She stuck out her tongue and made a noise that could only be spelled as 'Nyah'.

The guards left and the Captain drew her tongue back into her mouth.

"That was mature," the patient across the hall from the Captain's cell commented. He was middle aged, slender and generally nondescript. The plaque next to his cell read 'R. Paulson'--a name that was completely unfamiliar to the henchgirl, which meant he was probably just a run-of-the-mill nutbar. She just shrugged.

"Say," he continued, as though her shrug were an invitation to start a conversation, shifting on his cot so that he was leaning toward her as conspiratorially as he possibly could with ten feet of space and two glass walls between them, "you ever wonder what would happen if a zombie apocalypse happened while we were all locked in here?"

The Captain snapped her fingers--or at least, tried to. "Of course I have. Who hasn't?"

He looked pleased and shifted even closer. "Promising. So tell me, do you think there's a difference between the undead and zombies?"

"_Duh,_" the Captain replied, flopping back on her cot to stare at the ceiling of her cell. "The undead have free will, higher brain functions, complex thought processes. Zombies are the dead, reanimated and have only one driving objective: feeding."

"Ha! You got it right," he said with obvious pleasure. "I think I like you. I'm Bob."

"That's nice." The Captain rolled over to face the wall.

"And you are?" he prompted hopefully, clearly thrilled at the prospect of making a new friend inside the asylum.

"Going to sleep."

---

The Captain had no idea how much time had passed between rolling over to go to sleep and when the guards woke her, but it couldn't have been all that long. It felt as though she had _just_ slipped into slumber long enough to take a breath before there were hands hoisting her out of bed.

"Hey, wassabigidea?" she squeaked from around a huge yawn, even as she was hauled out of her cell.

"Intake," one of the Cro-Magnon guards grunted shortly. "Gotta meet with yer counselor."

The Captain frowned, then yawned again, sleepily staggering as the guards dragged her down one hallway, then another and another still after that. By the time they came to a halt outside the office of Doctor LaMarche, she qualified as semi-conscious at the very least. She was ushered into the office a bit roughly, dropped into one of the squeaky leather chairs and the door slammed, all in the space of a few minutes.

She let out a startled noise when the wingback swivel chair behind the doctor's desk turned abruptly, revealing a portly fellow with a shock of wavy white hair. His elbows rested on the chair arms and his fingers were tented, their tips brushing the very end of his far too large nose. Huge blue eyes beneath bushy silver brows surveyed her from behind massive round spectacles. All in all, he looked a bit sinister. Cuddly, but sinister.

"Miss Stevenson," he rumbled in a deep baritone, one corner of his mouth turning up in a mildly unsettling smile.

The Captain blinked slowly--once, twice, three times--and then proceeded to burst into hysterical laughter. The doctor lifted one eyebrow, nonplussed, as she held her sides and gasped out, "Oh, tell me about the peas in July over the snow."

The doctor's eyebrow lowered and he tipped his head ever so slightly to one side with confusion. "I beg your pardon?"

She shook her head, still giggling. "Never mind."

"Miss Stevenson," he repeated, turning his attention to the clipboard on his desk. She cut him off before he could continue.

"That's not my name."

He looked back up at her. "Then what _is_ your name?"

"They call me the Captain."

Doctor LaMarche picked up a pen and began taking notes. "And what are you the Captain of?"

"The Enterprise, naturally."

To his credit, the doctor didn't look at her like she was around the bend. "Really. Are you Captain Kirk?"

"Of course not. Don't be ridiculous." She laughed at him like he was being absurd. "I'm Captain of the Enterprise-B."

He made a 'hm' noise and continued scribbling. "Do you know why you're here?"

"Sure," she responded, bringing her finger up to circle it next to her temple, "I'm loco as the do-do."

"Tell me about yourself. Who are you?"

The Captain leaned in towards the doctor and stared at him from eyes narrowed to mere slits. "Who is I? I's Bosco, that's who _I_ is, ain't nobody else except but."

LaMarche smiled in spite of himself but didn't look away from his paperwork. "Cute."

"Thanks, I thought so."

"Let's start small. Do you know what day it is?"

"Today."

"And what day is that?"

"Yesterday's tomorrow."

"And who's the president?"

"Zaphod Beeblebrox."

At this, he looked up. "Miss…Captain, who is the president of the United States of America?"

"Frankenstein."

He looked at her curiously, calmly taking her nonsense in stride "Do you know who the president is right this moment?"

She thought for a few seconds and then innocently asked, "He's usually Harrison Ford, isn't he? Or Bill Paxton?"

He tried to approach the question from another angle. "Who did you vote for in the last election?"

"Richard Nixon." She smiled fondly. "I love Nixon."

Realizing he wasn't going to get anywhere, Doctor LaMarche let that line of questioning drop and moved on to another. "What year is it?"

"The year of the tiger…" There was a pause and then she burst into song: "it's the thrill of the fight, rising up to meet the challenge of our rivals. Um, something, something, something, eye of the tiger!"

"Let's try something a little easier," he suggested. "What's your favorite color?"

The Captain made a thoughtful sound and rested her chin in her hand, staring off into space as she considered the question for a moment. "Cabbage."

Unaffected, LaMarche followed the conversation to its inevitable ludicrous conclusion. "And your favorite vegetable?"

"Chartreuse."

"Miss Stevenson," the doctor said with a long suffering sigh, "I'm only trying to help you. This will go much more smoothly if you'd just cooperate."

"Cooperation is for Care Bears," she said cryptically.

"How about we try something else? Word association?"

At this, the Captain perked up, cheerful disposition replacing her mildly surly one. "Okay. I like that game."

"Good," LaMarche replied with obvious relief, picking up his clipboard and flipping a few pages. "Alright, now just tell me the first word that pops into your head. Enemy."

"Lasagna."

"Robust."

"Below wax."

LaMarche frowned. "Semiautomatic?"

"Aqua."

"Accompany."

"Slacks!"

"Lemon?"

"Demon."

"_Miss Stevenson!_"

"Sister Christian!"

LaMarche set his clipboard down and gave the Captain a disapproving look. "Miss Stevenson, if you aren't going to be serious--"

"Oh the time has cooooome and you know you're the only one to say, 'okay'--"

"Miss Stevenson!"

The Captain abandoned her makeshift sing-a-long and opted to smile at the doctor without an ounce of apology in her expression. "Oh, come _on_, doc. If you were in my position, you'd be antagonizing you too."

A little vein in LaMarche's forehead popped up and throbbed threateningly, but he miraculously kept his temper in check. "Miss Stevenson, you are in Arkham for care _so that you may one day be released_. It's my job to provide the treatment that will make you a functional, productive member of society again."

"Again!" She laughed outright, then remembered herself and turned somber. "I mean…ahem. Serious face."

"Now, I understand that you have a problem with authority--"

She snickered and muttered, "Wait 'til you meet Ops."

"But you _must_ adjust your attitude if you ever intend to leave this place. I only want to _help_." Doctor LaMarche pressed the call button on his desk and stood, looking at the Captain the way a disappointed parent might. "I have faith that once you get used to the idea, you'll respond to treatment."

The office door opened and the Captain's two hefty escorts entered, pulling her from her chair.

"In the meantime, though, perhaps a little discipline would be in order." LaMarche straightened his papers. "Put her in solitary for the next three days."

At this, the Captain straightened up and dropped the dippy, smart-ass inmate act. "_What_?"

"Solitary confinement. Three days." He jotted absently on his clipboard without looking up. "Perhaps a regimen of shock therapy for good measure. "

"But I haven't done anything!" she exclaimed, visions of electrodes dancing in her head.

"That is a matter of opinion," he responded, waving his hand at the guards. They started dragging her out into the hallway, struggling every step of the way.

"Hey, now, wait a minute! You can't do this!"

The door slammed, the sounds of the Captain being hauled away echoing around LaMarche's office. With the din of her protests drowning out everything else, he shifted and picked up the telephone from its place on his desk. He dialed nine to get an outside line and then punched several numbers from memory as the Captain screamed at the top of her lungs out in the corridor.

"You can't! Shock treatment is illegal! Illegal!" There was a brief pause, followed immediately by: "It was also an inferior sequel!"

The Captain's voice grew further and further away as the line buzzed in his ear and he finally got an answer. Doctor LaMarche cleared his throat and spoke into the receiver, "Christine? Maury. About that interview you wanted…?"


	4. Session Two: Techie

_Click, click._

The tape recorder ticked on and Doctor La Marche sat back in his seat, smiling at the young woman across from him. She didn't smile back, just stared. Granted, having been restrained in a straight jacket, she didn't have all that much to smile _about_, but La Marche had hoped she'd adopt a positive attitude.

"Now, Miss…er…" He flipped through the pile of paperwork on his desk, sending at least one spare paperclip skittering across the surface until it teetered over the edge and-tink, tink-fell to the floor. He finally found what he was looking for and, after glancing at the paper from over his glasses, he looked back at her. "Thompson, I believe? Or is it Stuart? Or—" he scanned the sheet again and chuckled, "Holloway? We have a lot of conflicting reports. Which is it?"

"MacDonald," Techie responded in pure, dry monotone.

He looked back at his chart and smirked. "Of course. One we don't have. So!" He set the chart aside and clasped his hands on the desktop, leaning forward and smiling at her again. "What would you like to talk about?"

Techie chewed on her bottom lip for a second and looked up, brow furrowed in thought. Her expression was exaggerated the way a child's might have been and La Marche had a hard time telling whether it was intentional—or rather, _faked_—or not. It was even harder to tell when her face lit up, she beamed at him and chirped, "Bartlett."

La Marche's own brow knit ever so briefly before his practiced air of ease took over. Having already dealt with the Captain's nonsense, and that of countless other nutcases, La Marche wasn't thrown by Techie's. "Bartlett. I see. Are we referring to the pear?"

"Hendley," she answered cheerfully.

"Hen-I beg your pardon?"

She wiggled her eyebrows at him as though she were Groucho Marx. "Ramsey."

"Miss MacDonald-"

"Velinski," she said with a smoothly blossoming smile.

"If you persist in playing games—"

"Dickes!"

"—there will be dire consequences."

"Blythe Sedgwick Ashley-Pitt," she practically sang, growing ever more gleeful with each utterance of gobbledygook. A light of pure, unbridled mischief danced in her eyes and she shimmied her shoulders inside her straightjacket, as much as the contraption would allow and then crooned, "Cavindish Ives!"

And then, without any warning whatsoever, she leapt up from her seat, leaned over the desk and propped herself up very awkwardly on her confined elbows. It took milliseconds for her to lean as close to the good doctor as possible, smile at him most becomingly and whisper not-quite-menacingly, "_Hilts_."

Instantly, recognition waltzed its way across La Marche's face. It flirted with his expression but a moment before he slammed his fist into the big red panic button on his desk and two very large guards burst into the room and wrestled the wayward patient to the floor. Some of the papers that she'd been leaning on scattered, a flurry of patient files and confidential information flying every which way, and she hit the ground, face smushed into the carpet, grunting under the weight of the guards as the paper showered down.

She didn't struggle (much) and once she was subdued and brought to her feet, she had the good grace to look a little guilty.

La Marche, unflappable as ever, straightened his coat and fixed her with a very, _very_ stern look-the sort of disapproving look a father gives to his daughter's greasy, motorcycle riding prom date. He huffed and glared like an irate bull.

"Captain Hilts. The Cooler King."

She smiled a little sheepishly and nodded.

"Listing all the characters in _The Great Escape_, Miss…whatever-your-name-is? _Really_? If you're going to be sarcastic, why be esoteric about it? Why not just give me rank and serial number?"

Her face immediately fell into a mask of indifference and she intoned, very matter-of-factly, "Chekov, Pavel, United Federation of Planets, service number six-five-six-dash-five-eight-two-seven-dee."

La Marche felt the strangest urge to throw his hands up in exasperation, but somehow suppressed it. Instead, he opted to rub his left temple briefly and waved his other hand in a gesture of dismissal. "Put her in solitary."

The guards started to drag her away but La Marche laughed suddenly and called, "Stop."

They paused and looked back at him, awaiting further orders.

"Give her a baseball," he chortled a little meanly. "Leave her in the straightjacket and give her a baseball."

Techie looked like she might protest but he cut her off. "Or doesn't that suit you, _Hilts_?"

Her mouth snapped shut instantly and she looked away.

And with that, the henchgirl was hauled off to solitary block.

* * *

The cells in S-Block were not as plush as those in the rest of Arkham. Rather than thickly padded walls and reinforced concrete, they were double layered reinforced concrete and very little padding. Where most cells had bulletproof, shatterproof, break proof, Joker-proof glass walls on one side, giving the illusion of more open space than there actually was, the doors to the solitary block were solid steel with a small rectangular window at the foot of the door for slipping food and medications in. They were bare bones, dank, depressing and everything you'd expect from a prison movie.

Communication between cell occupants wasn't impossible under these circumstances, but it was a lot more difficult. However, as Techie was dragged past the guard station, cell one (Victor Zsasz), cells two and three (unoccupied) and cell four (the Captain), she whistled a favorite theme song as loudly as she could manage and then, when the guards stopped her in front of her 'room', she said a little too loudly, "Ah! Six! My lucky number!"

The guards tugged open the door and threw her hastily inside, tossing a baseball from the now defunct exercise yard in after her and slammed the door.

Their footsteps echoed down the hall and were followed by the slam of the door to the guard station. Almost immediately, there was a far off, slightly muffled call of, "Ops!"

Like a sausage trying to escape its casing, Techie squirmed around on the bare floor and sat up awkwardly, as close to the mailbox-sized slot in the door as she could manage. She squirmed some more and the paperclip she'd managed to get hung on her straightjacket in the scuffle with the guards fell—tink, tink—to the ground.

"I'm here!"

"You okay?" the Captain called back.

"Yeah! I—" Techie announced proudly to the door, "have a paperclip!"

There was a brief, pregnant pause before the Captain called, "You have a papal twit?"

Techie's head hit the door with a thunk. "I said I have a PAPERCLIP!"

"Oh!" The Captain's voice sounded relieved. "Good! Paperclips are good."

Techie wriggled inside the straightjacket and then frowned. "However, I have a paperclip and am stuck inside a straightjacket. These two things don't really work all that well together."

"I'm sorry."

"How about you, Captain? Got anything useful?"

"I…um…" The Captain sounded uneasy. "I have a cockroach?"

Techie's head suddenly snapped up and she scanned the cell from top to bottom, looking for creepy crawlies. There weren't any, but she still felt a little paranoid even as she leaned back towards the door and continued her conversation. "If you have a cockroach in your cell, why aren't you screaming your head off?"

"Oh, I screamed. For the first twenty minutes or so. Then I got all lung hurty and stopped." There was another pause. "And I kinda forgot it was there until you reminded me-it's off in its own little corner. I…uh…I've named it Jiminy."

Techie recoiled in horror. "It's not a _pet_, Captain."

"It's a coping mechanism! Maybe if I pretend it's a cuddly-wuddly cricket, I won't be—EEEEK! IT'S SKITTERING! Oh God, Ops, it's _skittering this way_!"

"Captain, stay calm, it-"

"Oh God! It-it-"

Sudden, abrupt silence.

"Captain?" Techie called with obvious concern. "Captain!"

"Ops," the Captain said slowly, "I think I gave it a heart attack."

Techie actually tipped over, she laughed so hard.

"Well," the Captain continued, "my assets are now comprised of one _dead_ cockroach…and yours consist of a paperclip."

"And a baseball."

"A baseball?" Techie couldn't be sure, but she thought she heard a giggle.

"Yeah…_Great Escape_ smartassery got me tossed in here. I didn't think that routine would be enough to exasperate the doctor, but I guess you must've done a number on him already."

"I gave him the nonsense act," the Captain replied with considerable and completely excusable pride. "So…got any ideas?"

"Even if I did," Techie responded a bit forlornly, "I'm in a straightjacket and I never mastered the art of popping my own shoulder out of its socket to escape…so I'm pretty much stuck."

"My hands are free," the Captain said. "But I don't have any tools. Well, none that would work, anyway. Though I've never tried, I'm _pretty_ sure you can't pick a lock with a dead cockroach…and even if it's possible, I'm _not_ touching that thing."

"Okay. So we wait for Al."

"Al!" The Captain's voice was laden with an uncharacteristic amount of hope. "I hope she gets here soon."

"Me too. I—"

Suddenly, there was a screech from the direction where the Captain's voice originated, followed by another and then another.

"Captain?"

"It's twitching!" the Captain cried. "It's aliiiiiive! I knew it! I knew it! This is how it starts!"

"What?" Techie shouted in confusion. "How _what starts?"_

"_The zombie cockroach apocalypse!"_


	5. Session Three: Al

_A/N: Though I'm sure she doesn't remember wanting it, this one is for Squeebers42, who offered ten dollars to the Red Cross in Alabama for the next chapter of "All Bad Girls" back when the Captain was offering word works as part of a charity auction. Obviously, Captain couldn't fulfill the bargain because it's my fic, but it was a nice gesture all the same. So, this one's for you, kid._

–

It was no secret that Al didn't like anything even remotely having to do with therapy one little bit. She hated it _so much_, in fact, that unlike the Captain and Techie, she didn't even bother to resist, or give the doctor a hard time. She wanted her session to be over as soon as humanly possible, and thus, it was with a minimum of fuss that she was escorted from her cell to Doctor La Marche's office. She didn't bite, she didn't scratch, she made no sarcastic remarks, and she didn't squirm inside her straightjacket, or struggle when the guards put it on. She didn't even question _why_ it was being forced on her; she just figured that, as usual, one of her friends had done something to remind everybody in Arkham that lowly henchmen could be unpredictable and possibly even, gasp, _dangerous_.

La Marche's door stood open, and Al was brought inside, only to find him still straightening up the papers that Techie had sent flying when she'd been wrestled to the ground. She was shoved down in into the chair opposite him, landing awkwardly on one of the straightjacket fasteners, her shoulder being crushed in the death grip of one of her captors. She didn't wince, didn't complain, didn't even sigh melodramatically, she just waited. La Marche waved off the guards, and they left the room, slamming the heavy door behind them, and he returned his glasses to their perch on his nose as he looked over her file.

"Miss..." He flipped the first page and frowned. "I see from our records you don't _have_ a name."

"You can call me Al," she responded flatly.

La Marche leveled her with a stern glare over the rim of his glasses. "I've already played this game with one of your friends, using _The Great Escape_ references. I'm certainly not about to start it all over again with you and Paul Simon lyrics."

Al rolled her eyes in a far more exaggerated fashion than was strictly necessary. "It's my _name._"

"I'm sure." He turned back to her file, unconvinced. "I see from our records of your last stay here, you've been diagnosed with anti-social personality disorder."

"That's a bit of a stretch," she said nonchalantly, shifting her shoulders inside the jacket, trying to get a little more comfortable. "I have antisocial _tendencies_; but I'm not _quite_ a full-on sociopath."

One of the corners of his mouth turned upward in a cynical smirk. "I do hope you'll understand my skepticism if I choose not to take your word for it."

Al couldn't help herself; she smiled genuinely. "Naturally. I won't even take offense or anything."

"I also see that you're..." He frowned at her paperwork again. "I see that you're reportedly the most docile of the Scarecrow's employees."

"I wouldn't really call myself _docile_." Her tone suggested she was a little insulted—but only a little. "But I'm definitely less of a hellion when I'm in Arkham."

La Marche became interested. "And why is that?"

"I don't really do the whole touchy-feely let's-all-hug-and-sing-kumbaya thing. I don't like therapy, I don't like shrinks, I don't like talking about my feelings and I _don't_ like people like you trying to poke around inside my head." Al's voice was firm, but still friendly and without threat somehow, despite her stony expression. "The path of least resistance is the one that gets me back in my cell the fastest."

"You _want_ to be back in your cell?"

"Yeah. I do."

He seemed the tiniest bit perplexed by this. After all, most of Arkham's inmates relished the opportunity to play complex psychological games with the 'normal' people that usually came with being allowed out of their cells, whether it was the Scarecrow whispering horror stories to the nurses in the infirmary late at night after lights out, the Riddler refusing to undergo any kind of treatment until his riddles were answered or the Joker staring intently at one of the men stationed in the recreation room, smiling like a hungry shark and making the poor fellow feel like his life was being threatened without lifting a finger. Given what her co-conspirators had been like, and what few news clippings of her exploits accompanied her file, he assumed that the same thing applied to Al as well.

"Al," he began, folding his hands together and placing them on his desk, "in all seriousness: do you have any desire to recover?"

She laughed at that. "Recover from _what_? My _job_?"

"Is that all it is to you?"

"It's a living," she said with an awkward shrug.

"So working for a serial killer, delivering victims into his waiting hands—that's the equivalent of folding sweaters at department store?"

In spite of herself, Al got a little defensive. "We never...well, okay, we _rarely_ bring him any test subjects who aren't scum. He's killed more two-bit hoods and corrupt businessmen since we joined up with him than innocent little old ladies."

"If I understand you correctly, you're defending your actions by saying that the victims deserve to die, and that you've been somehow..._protecting_ innocent people through sacrificing the wicked?"

"You're getting a little too deep here, Doc. We don't have any delusions about being good girls; we've killed people, we've _helped_ kill people, we've brought people to Jonathan Crane like lambs to the slaughter," Al said firmly, "but almost every test subject we've ever brought to the Scarecrow has done something horrible, and every murder we've committed has been self defense. We haven't got many standards, but we do have _some._"

Like a child with a brand new toy, La Marche was visibly enjoying seeing what happened when he punched Al's buttons. This was more progress than he'd made with the other two, and _far_ more progress than Al obviously wanted him to make with her. "_Almost_ every test subject?"

"Well, there's always going to be collateral damage. We can't control his actions, we aren't responsible for every cashier he decides to gas while we're not looking—"

"Aren't you?" He pressed. "You're close enough to him to kill him, or at least subdue him, and make sure that he never hurts anyone ever again, but instead, you assist him in his crimes."

"If you're trying to make me uncomfortable with my sense of ethics, you're barking up the wrong fish.".

"I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable, I'm just curious about how you can justify not taking responsibility for every crime the Scarecrow commits when you're near enough to stop him."

"We're no more responsible for his actions when we're not around than you're responsible for a patient who commits suicide using the drugs you've prescribed...but I'm sure that's never happened, right, Doc? And you've never been part of any clinical trials for drugs shown to, oh, say, send people into psychotic breaks, I'm _sure_."

An expression of mild discomfort flirted with La Marche's face briefly but it was gone in a flash. "Why did you choose this..._career_, Al?"

"I dunno. I just did." She tilted her head at him. "Why did you cheat on your wife?"

He sat back heavily in his chair, and eyed Al critically. "What gives you the impression that I did anything of the sort?"

"Tan line," she said, nodding at the strip of pale flesh on La Marche's left ring finger. "You recently took a wedding band off."

"Yes. I did. Why do you suspect adultery on _my_ part?"

"Your office couch has been slept on, suggesting wifey threw your ass to the curb, and your jacket," she glanced over at the tweed monstrosity hanging from a hook in the corner nearest the door, "smells like a woman's perfume. I got a whiff when I passed it. _Lady Gotham_, I believe, and if I'm not mistaken, it goes for something like five hundred dollars a bottle. That's _ way_ too expensive for the wife of a doctor who works at Arkham. The pay here is shit. Everyone knows that."

"If you're trying to make me uncomfortable..."

"I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable," she parroted with a smirk, "I'm just curious about blah-blah-blah bullshit blah-blah justification_. _See? I can play psychiatrist too."

"I admire your audacity," he replied carelessly, "but I've had sessions with the _Joker_. You're not going to rattle my cage with any third rate psychological theatrics."

"I'm just trying to prove a point. Look, Doc, you and I? We're the same. You make the same kind of choices that I do every day. When you drive to work and drive just a little bit faster to make the light, you put just as many people in jeopardy as I do when I rob a liquor store. It's human nature to want to be the hero of your own story," she said, "you're the hero of yours, and I'm the hero of _mine_. We both like it that way. I work for the Scarecrow, I've done _very_ bad things, I've been an accessory to and committed murder on more occasions than I can count, but I've _never_ hurt an innocent person. _Everyone_ who's ever wound up on the receiving end of my shovel's swing has deserved it."

"You sold yourself short, Al," La Marche said suddenly, with a little too much cheer.

"What?"

"You said you weren't a full-on sociopath. You sold yourself _very_ short." He ticked off a list on his fingers. "Lack of empathy, lack of remorse, disregard for the rights of other human beings, anyone you hurt or take advantage of deserves it... You're inching very closely to being _textbook_."

"Maybe. I did say I had antisocial tendencies." Al smiled back at him. "But there are more shades to the rainbow than black and white, and more sides to right and wrong than legal and illegal, and I think you—a guy who lives in Gotham under the protection of a shadowy _vigilante—know_ that."

A sharp rap at the door interrupted what promised to become a fascinating philosophical discussion, and La Marche called for the visitor to enter.

In a swish of pale lavender fabric, Christine Dean entered the office with two guards flanking her. For someone in the most secure psychiatric facility in the state, she was awfully casual and comfortable with her surroundings. "Ah! Maury, I see you've got one of them in here with you."

"Oh, God, not _you_," Al muttered in horror. Miss Dean was easily recognizable from her appearances on the occasional Gotham afternoon talk show panel, where she mostly just smiled pretty for the camera and spouted some pop psychology bullplop and sensationalist fiction that she dressed up as journalism.

"Christine," Doctor La Marche rose from his chair and tipped his head slightly towards her, as he didn't dare reach over the desk to shake her hand with Al sitting between them. "I'm just finishing up here."

"Splendid!" she exclaimed happily, behaving more like a debutante arriving at a garden party rather than a reporter on the job. She turned to Al and looked her up and down. "Rather a bit more plain than I was expecting, but not everyone can be Harley Quinn I suppose."

Al's eyes narrowed considerably. "No, they can't."

"So, which one _are_ you?" Miss Dean asked, staring at Al like she was a collectible instead of a person.

"Al."

"Oh! _You're_ the one who likes him, aren't you? Isn't that _precious_!" Christine reached out and tousled Al's hair. For the first time since being removed from her cell, the henchgirl actually got noticeably angry.

"I'm not a poodle, lady," she griped, though she had the urge to snap at her like one. "I'll thank you not to pet me like one."

"You are just _too_ cute." Her condescending cooing was making Al like her even _less_ than she initially thought she would. The flouncy brunette turned back to La Marche. "So, is the interview room ready?"

"It should be prepared, ye—"

"I do hope you realize I in_sist_ on speaking to all three of them at the same time."

"You know that's against protocol, Christine."

"Oh, who needs to be protocoligorically correct all the time?" She waved a hand dismissively. "A single interview with all three will make for better reading. Besides, I brought my photographer along; none of these no-names is even recognizable to the general public without the other two! Hell, they're barely recognizable _together_!"

Al's ego was inexplicably pricked by this. "Hey!"

"Well, it's true," Christine said to Al directly. "Everyone knows the Scarecrow has three henchgirls and everyone knows _maybe_ one defining characteristic of each of you, if that much. A front page photo of _one_ of you won't garner any interest at all. And, not to put too fine a point on this, but when it comes to being photogenic, you're all rather...average. Together, you're at least _interesting_ in your average-ness."

Al's lips pressed into a thin white line and she fumed quietly, muttering under her breath that at least _her_ boobs were real, unlike some reporters-who-shall-remain-nameless.

"Christine," La Marche began again, "I realize they're _just_ henchmen, but I don't think you—"

"Look, Maury; just gimme a couple of your biggest, burliest, _dreamiest_ guards, and I'll be fine." She winked at him, revealing _salmon_ colored eyeshadow. Al didn't really care about such things usually, but even she felt the urge to recoil. _A pale lavender skirt suit and __**salmon**__ eyeshadow?_ The Techie voice in Al's head helpfully supplied, _Oh, __**barf**__._

She continued, unaware that her interviewee was mentally skewering her ill advised fashion choices. "I'll sign all the proper releases, Arkham won't be responsible for my safety, and you'll get a nice fat check from _Gotham True Confessions_ magazine, just like I promised you. My last piece for them, _The Bleak Ballad of the Bookworm: Failure and Felonies_ was such a hit they're offering a sum of money for this article that's so obscene I can't even say it aloud without blushing! And you'll be getting _half_ of it."

La Marche looked at Al, then back at Christine, and finally agreed. "The usual paperwork will have to be signed, by both you and your photographer—"

"Already done." She produced several forms from the purse Al hadn't even noticed she was carrying—and that actually wasn't allowed in Arkham, though a few eyelash flutters at one of the newer guards had taken care of that nonsense—and handed them to the doctor. "They're in triplicate, of course, as is required by Arkham policy. So, my interview?"

"I'll call down to solitary block and have the others brought to you." Doctor La Marche replied, looking over the forms. "And the biggest guards we can spare will be at your disposal."

"Thank you." Christine graced him with a pleasant smile. "And of course, I take full responsibility for anything that happens, though I'm _sure_ nothing will go wrong."

Al let out a snort that she covered rather unconvincingly with a cough, but nobody made comment on it.

"Al." Doctor La Marche returned his attention to her. "We'll continue your session at a later time."

"Sure," she said, her lips twisting into a smirk as the guards who'd escorted Christine took her by the arms and started dragging her out of the office. "Hey, Doc, remember what I said about choices?"

"Yes?"

She called from the hallway, "You just made one."


	6. The Turning Point

The interview room was too small by half for three convicted criminals, a reporter, two guards and a cub photographer, but that wasn't going to stop the irrepressible Christine Dean. Caution? Logic? Bah! You didn't see Lois Lane getting the Pulitzer with that sort of thinking!

(Not that there was _any_ danger of Dean ever being presented with one of those, but that point still—at least in her mind—stood.)

The photographer adjusted the lens on her camera, bringing it up to her eye and focusing on the henchgirls at the table. If the heavy black eyeliner and I'm-rebelling-against-my-mom Mohawk was any indication, she was a high school kid. Sure. Why Not? Why _wouldn't_ Gotham's foremost tabloid hire an unpaid intern to shoot photos for a front page story? They were just that kind of paper.

"This is my good side," Techie said, presenting the left side of her face, tilting it slightly and pouting. The pin-up effect was somewhat ruined by the straitjacket.

"I'll try to remember that," the photographer said flatly, not even bothering to snap a picture of the hench fully posed.

Dean, meanwhile, was rummaging around in her handbag, pulling out pencils and notes and placing them on the table in front of herself. They just kept coming, one after another, paper after paper.

"Hey, got any gum in that bag of holding you're holding?" Al asked semi-seriously, squirming in her seat.

Dean ignored Al entirely, straightening her pencils in a line. "All right, I suppose we're just about ready to get started. Guard, take their restraints off."

The guard, who looked like as much of a 'Rocco' as his name tag indicated he was, gave Dean a look that was equal parts worried uncertainty and confused disbelief. "I...don't think we're allowed to do that."

"Oh, please. Don't be stupid," she dismissed, the same way she dismissed the perfectly legitimate concerns of LaMarche, "they're Z-listers! Like Nocturna or...or Catman! They're so small time that the Gotham Globe wouldn't even bother to publish their obituaries. Take the jackets off."

A dark expression crossed the Captain's face and she quietly grumbled, "Nocturna is _cool_, damn it. She has a hot air balloon. Hot! Air! Balloon!"

"Look, lady, I know this is probably your first time in Arkham and everything—"

"I _need_ their hands free," she snapped. "There are release forms to sign and they can't very well do that with their tongues!"

"Techie could!" Captain volunteered helpfully.

"I can only _type_ with my tongue," the other woman corrected, "and really, that 's not much of a trick."

Al looked horrified. "Do you have _any_ idea how many germs are on the standard keyboard? _Ew_."

The guard still looked unsure.

"_Do it,_" Dean pressed, crossing her arms over her chest. "You're not _afraid_ of a bunch of _girls_, are you? A big strapping young man like _you_?"

The guard glowered at her. "I'm not afraid, but I'm not _stupid_, either."

The girls shared a look that very clearly spelled out _Well, damn._

Dean matched his glower. "Release them. Cuff them to the table or something, but I need their hands free."

Rocco considered. The girls tried not to look too hopeful, but only two of them succeeded. He glanced at the other guard, who gave him a one shouldered shrug, and finally relented.

Though he braced himself for a violent outburst, none of the girls did anything untoward, which was far more worrisome than if they had. They sat quietly as he stripped them of their straitjackets in turn, handcuffing each to her own chair, and then thanked him when he was through.

Once this was done, release forms were shoved at them, and they were handed somewhat dull pencils to sign with.

"Is this really legal if I sign it in _pencil_?" Captain asked suspiciously.

"One of the things I couldn't get anyone to budge on was pens," Dean said with a roll of her eyes. "Too many metal parts. Pencil will have to do."

Captain still looked skeptical. "Is it still legal if I don't sign my _real name_?"

"There are allowances for that. How else would the Joker be interviewed by _anyone_?"

When they finished signing, Dean took the paperwork with a flourish and filed it in her purse. A digital recorder, far more advanced than the somewhat sad, ancient tape recorder that poor LaMarche had used, was produced and placed on the table.

"Now then," Dean said, punching the 'record' button with one well manicured finger, "Ahem!"

"Did she seriously just say ahem?" Techie murmured from the corner of her mouth.

"Yup," Captain muttered back. "This is gonna be _fun_."

"So, ladies, any juicy tidbits to share with Gotham City?"

"Juicy tidbits?"

"What, like spare ribs?"

"Pork chops!" The Captain chirped, then corrected herself. "Wait, those aren't juicy, they're just kind of rubbery and suck…"

"Let's really get down to it here," Dean said, leaning forward with conspiracy in her eyes. "How's Jonathan Crane in bed?"

"Kinda bony and poky in places. Not very cuddly, really," Techie blurted.

"That isn't what she meant," Al said, spinning her pencil with boredom.

Techie looked back at Miss Dean, eyes wide. "You actually think we've done the squeaky spring square dance with the _Scarecrow_?"

Before Dean could even respond, Al lifted a brow and remarked, "Techie, sometimes you're so cutesy I could drink bleach."

Dean was clearly confused. "You mean you _haven't_ slept with him?"

"Not in the biblical sense!" Al exclaimed. "Actually, is that even _allowed_ in the bible?"

"Song of Solomon," Techie said.

"Oh. Right. All the talk about love and breasts and stuff, " Al shrugged. "Eh, I got bored on the first page."

The reporter checked her notes, frowned and crossed something off, scribbling in the margins. "So, which members of the opposite sex _are_ on the menu at old Casa Del Scarecrow?"

All three henches went silent. Like a pendulum swing, Techie looked at Al, Al looked at Captain and then the pattern reversed.

"She thinks we're straight?"

"What, like _all_ of us?"

"Even Sq—_Scarecrow_?"

Their laughter echoed off the walls, the reverberation making them sound not unlike a bunch of burbling, cackling chickens. Al wound up with her forehead down on the tabletop, pounding her fist against it and laughing hysterically; Techie leaned back so far that she almost tipped over, chair and all, and the Captain's face was so scrunched and red from laughing that she was hardly recognizable.

"Straight! She thinks we're…"

"That's…so…funny I can't…_breathe_!"

Dean's face grew pinched. She did _not_ like being laughed at. "You mean you're _gay_?"

Techie actually fell out of her chair. Since one of her hands was cuffed to its metal rungs, it clattered after her. "She thinks there's only two orientations!"

It was then that pandemonium broke out.

Both Rocco and the guard who the girls only mentally cataloged as 'the other one' descended on Techie immediately, dragging her up off the ground with her chair in tow. While they were occupied with one cackling henchgirl, Captain lept out of her seat, grabbing the chair by its back and—after knocking down the security camera with it—swung it directly at Rocco's head. The 'clung!' sound of metal on skull was ever so very satisfying, and he went down like a wet sack of kittens. The other one lunged for Captain and caught her, but not before she cracked him across the face with a chair leg, leaving a gash in his cheek.

"Lok'tar!" Captain cried as she was thrown to the ground, and Dean backed out of her chair against one wall as the table was upended in the process. The photographer, rather than running, backed herself into a corner and started snapping pictures.

Flash!

Techie jumped on Rocco's back, snatching his keys away and tossed them to Al, who made quick work of her cuffs. After throwing the keys back at Techie, she made a move on Dean, one of the reporter's own pencils in hand.

"Say," she said casually, twisting Dean's arm up behind her back and putting the pencil's dull tip up against Dean's jugular, "did I ever tell you guys about that time I stabbed Superman with a pencil?"

Flash!

"Can't..._breathe..._" Captain wheezed as she struggled underneath the nameless guard, clawing at his eyes while he tried to drag her to her feet.

Techie, now free from her own handcuffs, tackled him, wrapping her arms around his thick neck and squeezing for all she was worth. "Get off her, you side of beef!"

Flash!

Now that he was busy being distracted by his own strangling, the Captain squirmed out from under the guard, and took another swing at him with the chair. Between the blow to the head and the sleeper hold, he was knocked out. Techie removed the Captain's restraints, and they got to a standing position just in time for the last camera flash, breathing heavily.

Captain and Techie made a move on the photographer, but the girl was ready for them, pulling a revolver out of her messenger bag.

"Well, shit," they said in unison, and put their hands in the air.

The photographer smiled and instead turned the gun on Dean, who seemed more upset about this turn of events than the pencil to her throat. "What are you _thinking_?"

The girl just grinned disarmingly. "I don't like you, you know."

Techie and Captain smirked at each other and dropped their hands. "A sympathizer."

"Spiffy!"

"You'll never work in this town again, Rachel!" Dean screeched.

"Eh, I'm a shitty photographer anyway," Rachel said with a shrug, bending down to grab one of the discarded pairs of handcuffs. She threw it to Al, who secured Christine with a cheeky grin.

"The guys who've got us on closed circuit are on their way now," Techie said, "we've got _maybe_ forty-five or sixty seconds left."

"Okay, so getting out of here...?" Captain asked.

"I've got a van outside," Rachel volunteered.

"That's great," Al said, being a little rougher with Christine than was strictly necessary as she tugged her along towards her friends, "how do we _get_ to it?"

"Duck."

KABOOM!

The far wall was blown out without warning, raining concrete dust and debris. The blast was just enough to create a human being sized hole to slip through without compromising the building's structural integrity.

"That was convenient," Captain said with a cough, waving a hand to try to clear the air.

"That was _The Final Frontier_," Techie said. "Classic. Plastic explosive?"

"Semtex," Rachel answered, ushering the other women through the hole. "The low security interview rooms are on the outskirts of the asylum. Figured it'd be easy."

"You'll never get away with this," Christine hissed angrily.

"Come on, you had to know we'd try something like this," Al answered with a roll of her eyes, shoving her outside, not the least bit sorry that she got a little scratched up in the process.

"The photographer was a surprise, though." Captain gave Dean a thumbs up. "Thanks for that!"

Dragging their hostage along behind, the girls found themselves in the now abandoned Arkham Asylum exercise yard. Softball equipment left to moulder was piled near one wall, but beyond that, the area was clear. That wasn't going to last, though.

"This way." Rachel broke into a sprint that the girls had difficulty matching, but they managed to stay within a few paces behind.

From the smoldering hole in the asylum wall, half a dozen guards flooded out into the yard in hot pursuit, but the escapees made it to the fence without interference. Rachel gave a mighty shove against the wrought iron bars and the snapped under her weight. Though their first instinct was "Shit! Superpowers!" on second glance, the girls realized that three of them had been sawed through and then carefully set back into place.

"Geez, you really thought ahead, didn't you?" Al asked, considerably impressed.

"We're not out yet."

They burst through the fence and into the woods.

"We're going to get lost again," Captain muttered, giving Dean a shove. She teetered a bit in her high heels but managed to keep up anyway.

The Arkham guards were close behind, shouting at each other to spread out.

"We're losing our lead," Techie said urgently.

"Not a problem." Rachel gestured over to some trees and skidded to a stop. A large white van without markings or even license plates pulled out from the brush. The back doors were flung open by an unseen hand and the girls all piled inside the vehicle without it ever coming to a complete stop.

The doors slammed behind them, closed by another young woman about Rachel's age who brandished a gun, and the van took off like a shot.

The Captain, Al and Techie untangled themselves and sat up, gasping for breath and periodically giggling hysterically. They shoved Dean against one of the van's walls, much more gently than they'd been treating her thus far. Her suit was torn, her pantyhose had a run in them and the heel of one of her shoes was dangling by a thin strip of leather; she'd been through enough.

"That was _epic_."

"I feel old."

"Lung...hurty."

"Everybody okay?" Rachel asked, gun still out.

"A little banged up, but we've had worse."

"Good," she said. "I'm supposed to deliver you in one piece."

Three pairs of eyes snapped up to look at their new found ally, then at her co-conspirator who was still guarding the doors, pistol in hand, and finally at the rear view mirror. The getaway driver briefly met their gaze and gave them a quick wink before looking back at the road.

"_Deliver_?"

"Hey now, wait a minute..."

"What do you mean—"

"Sorry to disappoint you, ladies. This isn't a rescue," Rachel said. "It's a kidnapping."

"Oh, not _again_," Techie groaned.


	7. The Set Up

_**Warning**: for very brief usage of misogynistic language._

* * *

"One thousand six hundred thirty-seven bottles of beer on the wall—"

"Captain..."

"One thousand six hundred thirty-seven bottles of beer—"

"If our captors don't do it—"

"Take one down, pass it around—

"I'll kill you myself!" Techie finished irritably.

"I don't know why you're still singing," Al said passively, "that party died of alcohol poisoning awhile back."

"One thousand...you made me lose count!"

"_Good_." Six voices answered in unison.

"Well," Captain said huffily, "what else am I supposed to do until we get to where we're going? We've already played _I__Spy_."

"And what a thrilling first three minutes _that_ was."

"It's not my fault there aren't any windows back here."

"You haven't gagged her yet _why_?" Techie asked, squeezing her eyes shut and rubbing her forehead to soothe the threatened migraine before it really got going.

Rachel and the backdoor guard—who still didn't have a name as far as their charges knew—shared a look.

"We can take it."

"You didn't think to pack a gag," Christine said shrewdly after a moment of consideration.

"Great. We've been kidnapped by amateurs." Al hung her head. "This is just embarrassing."

"Not as embarrassing as forgetting a basic kidnapping staple like a gag, I'd imagine." Christine smirked. She was treated to a death glare from the young woman guarding the van's back doors, but was unfazed.

"Look, I know this is against hostage and captor interaction one-oh-one," Techie said as reasonably as she could manage considering how frazzled she was, "but could you _maybe_ give us some indication of who you are, what you want and why we're heading to New England?"

Both captors traded a look of mild panic and blurted in turn:

"How did you—"

"We're—"

Christine pointed towards the windshield, where the sun was going down. "We're heading north east. There aren't many places places to go in that direction that aren't the ocean, and since we're not up to our necks in water yet..."

"We could be taking you to Canada," Rachel said stubbornly.

"You wouldn't risk the border," Christine said with another maddening twist of her lips.

"I like you less and less," Rachel mumbled.

"Meanwhile, I like her more and more," Al said quietly. "Damn it."

"I know," Techie agreed. "It just isn't fair. Why can't she just be _all_ hateable, all the time? Stupid people and their stupid three dimensions and redeemability—" the Captain made a peep of protest, but Techie cut her off before she got any further, "—which is totally a word because I say so."

The Captain rolled her eyes as the van slowed and turned a corner. It came to a stop, the brakes squeaking a little more than sounded healthy, and the driver turned off the engine.

"We're here already?"

None of the kidnappers said anything one way or another, but the driver's door popped open and she hopped down out of her seat. Her door slammed behind her, she crossed in front of the windshield and then seemingly disappeared.

Nothing happened.

Thirty seconds went by. Al cleared her throat.

A minute. The Captain stretched leisurely.

Techie cracked her knuckles around the minute and a half mark.

After another three minutes, the back doors of the van swung open. The girls got their first good look at the driver, a curvy, muscular blonde with at least thirty pounds on the heaviest of them and three inches on the tallest. She had a jacket draped over her arm, but to the trained eye, a protrusion in the fabric gave away the fact that it concealed a gun.

"Our room is ready," she chirped in a surprisingly high pitched Minnesota accent. "Come on, ladies."

Grumbling, the henchgirls and reporter climbed out of the vehicle, stepping on each other in the process, while the other two kidnappers urged them along with pistols. Once out in the parking lot, the girls tried to reorient themselves after several hours in a cramped and rapidly darkening van. If you'd asked them what they were expecting, they probably couldn't have told you in detail, but they definitely weren't expecting to be dropped at the front door of a fancy hotel, complete with red carpet and doorman.

"Why can't we get kidnapped like this every time?" Captain asked quietly as she was shuffled up the walkway.

Christine gave the girls a sideways glance "I don't know what you're talking about. I _always_ get kidnapped this way."

"Oh, good, I hate her again," Al said with a sigh of relief. "I was starting to worry about myself."

Once they burst into the hotel lobby, the girls were immediately led away towards the elevators, garnering a curious yet disdainful look from a middle aged woman with a teacup poodle who clearly did not approve of...something. Nobody else seemed to pay any attention to the large group of young women, beyond a bellhop who nodded at them with a smile and asked conversationally, "Here for the convention?"

"You betcha!" Minnesota Blonde answered with a convincing grin as the ragtag band came to a stop in front of the elevators. As if on cue, the doors flew open and Captain, Al, Techie and Christine were pushed inside. Buttons were pressed, movement was felt, Captain got nauseous about halfway up but mercifully kept her Arkham breakfast down, and then the elevator came to a stop.

With a _**ding!**_ the doors popped open, and it was back to being herded through the hotel again, down one hallway, then another, across a sky walk and a few more hallways for good measure. After what felt like forever, they finally stopped in front of one of the hotel rooms. Minnesota Blonde slid a key card into the door lock, opening it, and what lay beyond was astounding.

"A king sized suite?" Captain asked incredulously. "For a _kidnapping_?"

"Standard procedure," Rachel said, giving Al a shove.

"God damn it, am I the only one who spends most of her kidnappings in the trunk of a Volkswagen Beetle?" Techie asked.

"Now don't get too comfortable." The still nameless kidnapper gave them a little smirk. "The suite is for us."

Christine, whose demeanor had started to return to somewhere near cocky, sputtered a little at this. "Then where are _we_ supposed to sleep?"

"The bathroom." Rachel gave a cheeky little smile.

Christine blinked. "This is some sort of very, very unfunny joke, right?"

"Karma," Al whispered, her lips thinning out. "That _bitch_."

"We've been over this, Al," the Captain said as they were pointed at the open bathroom door, "Karma is a concept, not a person."

"Still a bitch."

"And don't say bitch!"

"You guys can rock-paper-scissors to see who gets to sleep in the tub," Minnesota Blonde said with a barely restrained giggle, slamming the door behind them.

As far as bathrooms to be held hostage in went, this one wasn't too bad. It was about the size of a standard motel room, had a tub and separate shower as well as a little room off to the side which presumably housed the toilet.

"No windows," Captain said, looking around.

"We're nine floors up," Techie was already on her knees in front of the sink, throwing open the cabinet doors underneath. "Wouldn't do us any good anyway."

Al went straight for the shelf near the bathtub, full of fluffy white towels and flung them all on the floor in a heap. Then she gave Christine a little push towards the toilet room. "Start grabbing stuff, princess, we're taking inventory."

"Like what?"

Techie flung a few tiny shampoo bottles over her shoulder. They landed amongst the towels. "Everything that's not nailed down."

"And a few things that are." The Captain was unscrewing the mirror from the hinges that attached it to the medicine cabinet. She set it on double sink's counter top and then joined Techie on the floor.

"You don't seriously think we're getting out of this, do you? They have guns!"

"Yeah, and Egypt's got the Nile." Another little bottle from under the sink sailed across the room and landed near the towels. "What's your point?"

"Oooh, alcohol!" The Captain waved a little stack of individually packaged moist towelettes.

"Even if we get out of here, we don't have a car..."

Al got up on the edge of the tub and started fighting with the shower curtain hooks that weren't meant to come off. "Then we get to introduce you to the magical world of automotive theft."

"Welcome to the dark side." Techie flashed her eyebrows at Christine and gave her a smile that spoke of a secret that the reporter wasn't in on.

Al gave up on the shower curtain hooks and just opted to start unscrewing the rod itself from the wall. She took it down gently, careful not to make any noise with it, and shoved it at Christine, who almost fell over with it.

"Take off those ridiculous shoes, sweetums," Al said, clucking her tongue at Christine's high heels. "They're no good to us _on_ you."

"Yeah, there's gotta be at least a dozen little pokey bits in those." Captain nodded at the shoes, moving to what appeared to be a closet. "Bound to be useful."

Christine dropped the shower curtain rod and staggered back, falling against the door. "No. You can't have my shoes. They're Van Dynes!"

"That...means something," Al said uncertainly.

"It means she has terrible taste," Techie muttered under her breath, flopping onto her back and slipping under the sink to get a look at the plumbing.

"It means you're not getting them is what it means!" Christine turned around and started pounding on the door with her fists. "Help! We're planning an escape! HELP!"

Meanwhile the Captain, who seemed to have zoned out during this little drama, popped out of the closet with a hair dryer in hand. "Jackpot!"

The bathroom door burst open just as Christine backed away from it.

The kidnappers all had their guns out when they flooded the room. Al dropped her bar of soap, Captain dropped her hair dryer, and Techie sat up so fast that she neglected to avoid hitting her head on the sink.

Fifteen minutes later, the shower curtain rod, towels, moist towelettes and even Christine's shoes were all confiscated. A few things that the girls _hadn't_ thought to grab were also gone, and they sat near the bathtub, exiling Christine to the other side of the room near the shower so that they could glare at her better.

"I hate her," the Captain ground out.

Al's eyes narrowed another fraction of an inch, turning them into nothing but slits, "I hate her _more_."

"They're not even good shoes!" Techie was easily the most indignant of all, or at least the one who was loudest about it. "It's not like they're Drew McFee's."

The Captain gave a little huff, made a fist and stretched her arm out in front of herself. Techie and Al caught on and did the same. "On three."

Christine seemed to panic a little. "What...what are you—"

"We're deciding," Al gave her another glare, "where we're going to sleep. Without any towels for pillows, you know?"

Their hands bobbed three times in the air before their fingers came unfurled; Techie, rock, Captain, scissors and Al, paper.

"Al gets the bathtub," Captain announced. "Techie, you sleep sitting up on the toilet, and I'll curl up in the shower."

Christine looked around the room for another sleeping option that might be mildly comfortable. "What about me?"

"Enjoy your stay at Hotel Floor, cupcake," Al said.

"_Traitorous_ cupcake," Techie amended venomously.

Christine sighed and looked so dejected they almost felt sorry for her. "I guess this means continuing the interview is out of the question..."

"You're damn right that's what it means," Techie snapped. "Look, what do you want to interview _us_ for, anyway? We're boring."

"You're..." Christine seemed reluctant to continue, "...accessible."

"I'm not sure if I'm insulted or not," Al said slowly. "What do you mean _accessible_?"

Christine hesitated once more. "It...it means..."

"It means she's not a big enough reporter to get an interview with any of the A-list villains," Captain said helpfully, without an ounce of malice, "but she _can_ get an interview with the hired help."

Whatever might have been left of Christine's bravado disappeared and her shoulders slumped. She looked like a balloon that had just been popped. "That's exactly what it means."

"That's endearingly pathetic," Al said flatly.

"I'm sorry you're a bad reporter. Would you like a hug?" the Captain asked, offering her outstretched arms.

Christine glared at her, but without any real heat. "I'm a _good_ reporter. I get the story. I _always_ get the story."

"Yeah, but what you do with it ain't so hot," Techie said.

"Hey, _you_ try writing to satisfy tabloid editors and see how good _your_ stuff is," Christine snapped, suddenly on the defensive.

"So work for a not-shit newspaper," Al said.

Christine suddenly became very interested in the floor and muttered something just barely above the range of human hearing. "Thwnthrmuh."

"What?"

Burning eyes turned up to stare at the girls. "_They won't hire me."_

"Oh."

"When I got out of school, none of the ...big...newspapers would give me a job. Not even an internship." Every syllable seemed to be fighting its way valiantly past Christine's pride to escape from her mouth. "They said I wasn't the right..._type_."

Techie gave her a knowing look. "Boobs were too big, huh?"

Christine gave a sad little sigh. "Tabloids were the only ones hiring, and I had rent to pay. Made some decent money at it, so I started working for everyone who'd take me. _Gotham Confessions, Crime Crush!_ those sorts of things. Before I knew it, I was a name. Not a very respectable name, but still."

"Let me guess," Al said, "you've got a good enough reputation that means you're in demand with the tabloids but bad enough that you're box office poison to the _real_ newspapers."

The reporter sniffed and nodded sharply. "You three were going to be my big break. This interview...someone at _The Gotham Bugle_ was interested."

The girls traded glances.

"But now..." Christine buried her face in her hands, drawing her knees up to her chest. Her shoulders started to shake. She let out a little high pitched whine that morphed into a sob, and then...

Silence.

More silence.

Christine sniffled a few more times and wiped her face with her sleeve before peeking up at the other three women.

Al started to slowly applaud. The Captain and Techie joined her after a second.

"Bravo!" The Captain cheered. "I almost bought that."

"I laughed, I cried, I got indigestion," Techie said. "Really, I experienced the whole spectrum of human emotion."

"That was the biggest crock I've ever heard," Al said, a slow grin creeping its way across her face. "I think it deserves something. "

"Oh, definitely," the Captain and Techie said in unison.

"Okay, Ms. Dean, you just earned yourself an interview."

Christine, rather than being upset that they'd seen through her ruse, gave them a completely forgivable self satisfied smirk. "Fantastic! Now, I must have a pen around here somewhere..."


	8. The First Big Reveal

A few hours later, Christine sat in a corner with the pen she kept hidden in her underwire, diligently taking notes on toilet paper as she conducted what may well have been the most thorough interview in tabloid history. It was _so_ thorough that Techie had started to doze, her head resting on Al's shoulder. Periodically, Al would shake her awake to answer a question, but she dropped off almost immediately afterward.

The Captain was drowsy as well, but she managed to remain upright for the most part. Every once in awhile, her head would roll back and she would start to snore, but a poke in the ribs jolted her awake when necessary.

Christine asked them about everything, from their favorite colors to the brand of socks they preferred for rolling up and stuffing in the mouths of hostages. Some of it was oddly specific information, but at any point when the girls gave her a funny look, she just said something about 'realism' and 'character' and kept scribbling. It was a surprising turn from the woman who had opened their initial interview with questions about their sexual habits.

But, of course, it was too good to last.

When Al started yawning and muttering to herself about pillows, Christine saw her opening and struck. If she knew anything at all about her job, it was that tired people under stress were far more likely to crack during an interview. Between Arkham, the break-out, kidnapping and sleep deprivation, mentally they were exactly where she wanted them.

"So." She looked at Al intently. "What are you?"

"Hu—" Al yawned widely. "Huh?"

"Gay, straight or _what_?"

"What do you care?" Al said, her demeanor changing in an instant from just tired to tired _and_ irritable. She said it so sharply, in fact, that Techie sat up suddenly, looking bleary and confused.

"Did someone say breakfast?"

"I want to know, is all," Christine said, ignoring Techie's half awake mutterings about whether or not there were pancakes. "I'm a writer. Romance is an angle my readers expect. I have to know..."

Al crossed her arms. "You have to know who you can speculate we're sleeping with."

"Well...yes." The reporter's honesty was startling.

"Not this again," Techie slumped on Al's shoulder and rubbed her eyes. "I thought you gave up."

"I don't give up."

"Why does it matter?" Al asked.

"I'm bisexual," Techie volunteered. Al glared at her, but she just shrugged sleepily. "What? She wasn't going to let it alone. So hi. Bi. I'm going back to sleep now."

Christine's face lit up with triumph, and more than a little mischief. "So does that mean—"

"Don't flatter yourself," Techie said with a yawn, slumping back on Al's shoulder. "I'm strictly into blondes and redheads."

"You shouldn't have said that," Captain murmured. How long she'd been awake and listening was unclear. "Now she's going to write you into a torrid three-way with Harley and Ivy."

"Eh, there are worse ways to be slandered." Techie gave a lazy one-shouldered shrug. "Which of us gets the bathtub again?"

"Al does."

"Forget the bathtub!" Christine said excitedly—where one girl cracked, the others were destined to follow. "What about you two? What are you?"

"A Libra," Captain said, wiping a little nap time drool from her chin.

"Would you just lay off? It's none of your business what we are. What is the matter with you, anyway? What gives you the right—"

"Oh, Al," Captain nuzzled Al's arm affectionately. "I love it when you get all righteously indignant and shouty."

"So you two _are_ together..." Christine looked like the cat that inherited a creamery.

Al threw up her hands in exasperation. "I can't believe I was starting to like you, you pea-brained gossip rag twit."

"All I want is to write the most sensational story I possibly can," Christine said reasonably. "I need a sexed up angle—"

Al's face screwed up in "Well, I'm asexual—"

"Me too!" Captain interrupted gleefully.

"—so you're just going to have to find a _different_ kind of angle. Twit."

Captain gave Christine her best jazz hands. "Surprise!"

It was like Christine's brain just...shut off. "Asexual. Like...you reproduce by yourself?"

"Ha ha ha, you are _so_ funny. I've never heard that one before!" Without warning, the Captain lunged, hands outstretched to throttle the reporter.

Techie grabbed her by the back of the shirt, holding her in place and saving Christine from a thoroughly wrung neck. "She is going to kill you and I am not going to stop her. I want you to know this."

"I'm..." Christine hesitated, seemingly genuinely perplexed by the Captain's sudden change in behavior. "I'm sorry. Did I say something wrong?"

A pounding came from the bathroom door, and it almost left its hinges when Minnesota blonde kicked it open. "What's going on in here?"

"Girl talk," Al said sweetly. "We're _bonding._"

She looked unconvinced. "We're heading out soon. Be ready."

"But we haven't even been to sleep yet."

"Not my problem," the blonde said flatly as she shut the door. "Ten minutes."

The Captain didn't seem to care very much that they were going to be back on the road; she was too busy shooting icy daggers at Christine. Techie patted her on the shoulder sympathetically. "I know, dear, I know. But escape from bad guys first, homicide after."


	9. The Second Big Reveal

Ten minutes later, when the girls emerged from the bathroom at the insistence of their captors, they were handed clean clothes and ordered to strip. The girls eyed them warily, but weren't given much of a choice in putting them on.

"I don't _like_ the Sex Pistols," Techie muttered, stripping her Arkham grays off and putting her new shirt on.

Captain slipped into the white pants she'd been given, mumbling something about Labor Day, and Al glared at the mini-skirt that Rachel handed to her. She snatched it angrily, almost stubbornly, and slithered into it, giving the smirking photographer a glare that should have melted her on the spot.

Christine wasn't given any new clothes to wear, so she just stood back, twiddling her thumbs and watching the action. Her face contorted every once in a while as she winced at certain fashion choices, but she remained silent.

It took a few minutes but the girls finished dressing and looked _almost_ like themselves. The effect was not unlike fashion dolls dressed by children who had _some_ idea of what their unique styles looked like, but didn't quite have the hang of it. Techie's trademark platform shoes were in place, but they were knee high boots rather than her customary ankle or calf height selections, and the image stretched across her chest belonged to a band she hated. The Captain wore a green tank top that was too olive-y to have been chosen by her with white pants that were too crisp and clean to have ever come from her wardrobe.

And Al...

Well, the less said about Al's hot pink sleeveless turtleneck thing and black mini-skirt, the better.

New clothes in place, the girls found small zippered bags in varying pastel shades shoved into their hands.

"What's this?" Al asked, holding her bag up by one corner and examining it suspiciously.

"_Make-up?_" Captain said incredulously, recognizing what she held in her hands without even having to open hers.

"Powder and paint makes a girl look what she ain't." Techie unzipped her bag, spinning the cap off a bottle of foundation and smoothed some over her face.

Al stared at her, looked at her bag, then back at Techie, who'd moved on to cracking open a compact and applying powder to her face. She seemed genuinely impressed, and if not impressed, then at least horribly perplexed.

Captain, meanwhile, opened her bag and—looking directly at her captors defiantly—dumped its contents on the floor in protest. "When hell freezes over."

"What?" Strangely, Christine seemed to take offense at this more than anyone else. "Why?"

"She doesn't like it," Techie said smoothly as she swept an eyeliner pencil across her skin, threw it back in the bag and grabbed a mascara wand to dab at her lashes for a moment before moving on to the next step. "Because patriarchy."

"Patriarchy!" Captain railed, shaking a fist at the ceiling.

Al still watched Techie, bag unopened, transfixed by the process of blending eyeshadow. "Are you a wizard?"

Techie rolled her eyes and applied some red lipstick in four even, measured and obviously practiced strokes. She tossed the lipstick back in the bag, bent over, shook her hair a bit, fluffed and smoothed it with her hands and then stood up straight again. She was recognizable, but only just.

"Alchemy!" Al cried, dropping her bag and pointing accusingly. "Burn the witch!"

Techie ignored her. "Do I look like I should be gyrating on the hood of a car in nineteen eighty-four?"

"Yes," Captain replied. "Well...you're straddling the Rockabilly line. So...Brian Setzer's car, I guess?"

"My work here is done." Techie flipped her hair once more and tossed her makeup bag at the foot of Minnesota Blonde. "Let's do this. Whatever 'this' is."

Rachel looked expectantly at the other henchgirls. "And you two?"

"Patriarchy," Captain said stubbornly, folding her arms over her chest.

"Witchcraft," Al hissed.

Rachel, Minnesota Blonde and the Other One shared a look. Rachel gave a one-shouldered shrug that seemed to settle things and, the makeup issue seemingly forgotten, they inclined their heads in the general direction of the hotel room door. "Let's go."

In mere minutes they were out in the hallway, waiting for the elevator to come. It arrived and they piled inside, doing their level best to look totally casual around the family of four in matching "I Heart Massachusetts" t-shirts.

After a few minutes, the elevator stopped and the girls were ushered out into the lobby, but instead of heading toward the exit like they were expecting, they pushed right past the front desk and the revolving doors standing opposite of it, all the way to the other end of the lobby and toward a wide hallway, crammed with people. Their captors formed a tight ring around them, like bodyguards, and took a sharp left toward a smaller corridor, avoiding the crowd entirely.

The group continued down the hallway, took another few turns and passed through a pair of double doors that warned "Authorized Personnel Only!" that led to another hallway—this one harshly lit by fluorescent bulbs—with two large burly men in black suits waiting at the end of it on either side of another set of doors.

Rachel flashed some sort of badge at them that the girls couldn't see and the guards allowed them passage with stoic nods.

On the other side of the door was a small room with a few comfortable looking chairs and a table full of finger foods. Al's stomach growled audibly when they came to a stop in front of it.

"Hey!" Christine was shoved into one of the chairs by two of the kidnappers and, in a flurry of activity and flashing silver, was duct taped to it. The Captain gave her a triumphant little smirk, even as she and her friends were grabbed and shoved towards the single door on the far side of the room.

The sound of an excited crowd outside was clear, but a booming voice said something that made them quiet down. It was impossible to make out exactly _what_ it said, but the voice raised and music began to play and the crowd went wild again, cheering and screaming and clapping ten times more loudly than they had been moments before.

The door opened and Captain, Al and Techie were shoved through, blinking at a series of flash bulbs popping in front of their eyes. They stumbled and bumped into each other a little bit. Once the shock wore off and their eyes adjusted after the brightly lit assault, they looked around in bewilderment.

The room was large, filled with dozens upon dozens of folding chairs and those chairs were filled with dozens upon dozens of _people_. Young women, and a fair few men, of all shapes and sizes applauded their arrival, some of them jumping up and down, waving little flags on sticks.

They were...on a stage?

They looked at each other, then turned to look behind themselves.

Stretched across the wall directly behind them was a large white banner, lovingly hand painted with the words: _Welcome to Henchcon VIII!_

* * *

_A/N: So...any wild guesses about where this is going? :D_


	10. The Climax

"—and here they are now!" Speakers thundered behind the stage area and the girls stood dumbstruck and confused at the roar of applause from their...gulp...audience.

"Captain," Al tugged on the hem of her commanding officer's shirt urgently and pointed into the audience, "someone is wearing your face."

"The bodysnatchers are here already?!"Captain shrieked, then calmed instantly when her gaze followed where Al's finger was pointing. "Oh. On a _t-shirt_. Don't scare me like that."

"Ladies—" the speakers boomed, "—do you have anything to say to your adoring public?"

The gathered crowd quieted down and looked at them expectantly. Al and the Captain looked at each other, nodded once, and gave Techie a great shove forward, toward a lone microphone stand at the front of the stage. She squeaked and stumbled a bit before turning to throw a furious glare over her shoulder at her friends. "Traitors."

Techie put her hands up, palms outward to quiet the crowd, who settled down after a few more scattered cheers. That was as far as she got, though. The room went dark, only the bright red EXIT signs still glowing. A fire alarm started to ring somewhere, then everywhere and the sprinkler system kicked on at full blast, raising a series of surprised cries from the gathered audience members.

The sound of metal folding chairs clanking together as everyone tried to get to the exits in something resembling a stampede added to the din of the alarm bells, but the most spectacular thing that happened was the speakers on either side of the stage shorting out. They went up in an explosion of hot white sparks, which were immediately doused by the wet carpet.

From somewhere behind them, a voice shouted "Come on!" and both the Captain and Al were pushed forward. They slammed into Techie, who nearly fell off the edge of the stage, but took the hint and bolted for the entrance they'd arrived through. Fortunately, nobody in the audience thought to use that door, so they sailed through it without any trouble.

On the other side, in the room where they'd left Christine and their kidnappers, the lights were also down. They bumped and stumbled and felt their way around, trying to find the exit as quickly as humanly possible.

THUMP.

"Ow! What the..." The Captain audibly scrambled across the floor and got back on her feet. "I tripped over a body! Who—OOF."

There was a moment of silence after a second heavy thud. "Make that two. Two bodies. Ah-ah-ah."

It was Al who finally found the exit and pushed her way through, flooding the room with illumination from the emergency lights lining the corridor outside. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. Once they were out in the hallway, they immediately turned to look at their savior-possibly-captor and were surprised to find...

Christine Dean. Still covered in several strips of duct tape, missing both shoes and a couple of buttons, her hair and makeup a complete mess, but there she was, miraculously free.

"How did you—"

"We don't have time. Let's get out of here before they wake up!"

"You—" Techie peered around Christine and into the room o' bodies. There on the floor was Minnesota Blonde, Rachel and the Other One, out cold and all sporting surprisingly large goose eggs. "—_you_ did that? In the space of two minutes?"

"Come on!" Christine urged, shoving them down the hallway. "We have to go!"

She was right. They ran.

It took about three minutes to find a service exit that spat them out in an alleyway full of rank smelling dumpsters, kitchen scraps and mysterious puddles of oily goo. They darted down the alley, away from the sound of approaching sirens and hoofed it to the nearest parking structure. The on-duty valets were too busy gawking at the hotel to notice that four scruffy, soaking wet women ran right past them, and Christine was quick to grab a pair of keys from one of the many lines of hooks on a board in the valet station.

Holding the keys aloft, she pushed the buttons on the keyring as they sprinted through the garage until finally, after rounding a corner and going uphill for half a level, a car horn chirped in response. A sleek, deep violet monster of a luxury car welcomed them easily. Doors slammed, seatbelts clicked and Christine gunned the engine, pulling out of the parking space and busting through the metal arm blocking the exit without leaving so much as a scratch on the hood.

The engine roared and they took off like a shot, speeding away from the hotel and toward the nearest highway.

Everyone was breathing hard and shaking from both cold and anxiety. It was only when they screeched onto the highway that they took a collective sigh of relief.

Then...the giggling started. It was just a burst of sharp, high pitched sound at first, rising from the Captain where she sat in the passenger seat, but it rapidly deteriorated into demented snickers, which gave way to chuckles and then impossible to control guffaws. Then Techie started giggling, turning a little red from trying to stifle herself. She eventually gave up and gave in, letting the laughter bubble out of her throat.

For Al, there was no such progression: she went straight into full-blown cackles, her head thrown back as far as it would go without falling off. Christine, despite being behind the wheel, was laughing so hard she had tears streaming down her face.

"That was awesome!" Al burbled, laughing hysterically.

"I think we've misjudged you," the Captain said between cackles. "You're amazing."

"Amazing? She's nothing short of fantastic!" Techie put a hand on Christine's shoulder from her place in the backseat without ceasing her wild giggles. "Want a job?"

"I can't—" Christine gasped for air and the car swerved a little bit. "I'm a reporter!"

"Not now you're—haha—not!" Al wheezed. "Now you're aiding and a—hahahaha—betting!"

Techie clawed the air as she tried to catch her breath. The car crossed the center line by two feet, inching its way towards the highway's guardrail. "I bet you weren't ahaha—abetting on aiding and abetting!"

The Captain tipped over in her seat, her head against the window, beating on it with her fist as she laughed so hard she started wheezing. "Abetting on abetting! That's the—hahahaha—funniest thing I've ever heard!"

"Puns!" Al squealed, cackling harder.

"I—hey—haha—guys—I think..." The Captain's wheezing morphed into an asthma attack, but it didn't stop the laughter. "I...guys! J—" She gulped the air like a fish on the beach, trying to regain the ability to speak.

"Techie is punny!" Al laughed, bouncing in her seat.

"Punny is punny!" Techie parroted, leaning on Al for support.

The car swerved dangerously close to the edge of the highway, which wouldn't have been a problem if there'd been a shoulder to swerve onto. Al looked out her window and said, "Hey—ahaha—water!"

"Jo—ahaha!" The Captain gasped out, trying to control her breathing. "—ker!"

Christine's face was pink with mirth, her cheeks wet with tears. "Ahaha—purple car! We stole—ahaha—the Joker's...CAR!"

The front of the car collided with the guardrail. The metal bent and twisted and then...gave way.

And then, they were flying. In a decidedly downward direction, heading straight for the water, they were flying.

"Hahahahashit!"

"Cockhahamonkey!"

"Smeghaha!"

SPLASH.

* * *

_A/N: Just one more chapter to go, guys! Should be up very, very soon. Thanks for reading!_


	11. The Twist

On the outskirts of Gotham City, nestled snugly in the Scarecrow's lair, the Captain—who most certainly was not trapped in the back of the Joker's car, hurtling toward a watery grave while laughing her head off—slapped her copy of _Crime Crush!_ Magazine down on the table. "Okay, that's it. I can't read another line."

Al, who had abandoned her own copy some time earlier, poked her head into the kitchen. "Giving up?"

"I don't think this magazine has an editor," Captain muttered. "And is it so hard to decide whether or not it's _LaMarche_ or _La Marche_, or if it's _Straightjacket_ or _Straitjacket_? I'm not even offended by the grammar, I'm just offended by the lack of continuity."

Techie was still reading, engrossed in their fictionalized encounter with Christine Dean. "Shh, it's just getting good."

"We got kidnapped by _fangirls!_"Captain snatched the magazine out of her friend's hands. _ "_And stole the Joker's car! What was he even _doing_ there? It doesn't make any sense."

Techie snatched it back. "It's great trashy fiction."

"It's garbage." Captain grabbed the glossy book once more, but Techie wouldn't let go.

"Well, I _said_ it was trashy." A tug of war began. "But that doesn't make it not-fun."

"That doesn't make it good, either."

"Hey, give this Dean woman some credit," the tug-of-war was rapidly turning into a wrestling match, "she got our personalities down, pat."

"Yeah, it's a great story, except for all the random lampshading and brilliantly nonsensical segues." The cover of _Crime Crush!_ came off in one of Captain's hands, but she still refused to release what was left. "Now we're talking about the ethical questions of being a henchman! Now we're talking about sexual orientation! Now we're making a daring escape! Now we're back to orientation again! Oh look, is that an unlikely plot development? No, it's five of them!"

"It might not be very well written," Techie said as she tugged harder, "but at least give her some credit for doing the research to portray us accuratel—eeee!"

Her chair upended, both Techie and Captain went sprawling, still struggling for ownership of the magazine.

"Should I make some pudding and get out the kiddie pool so you two can wrestle all proper-like?" Al offered from her place in the doorway.

"Shut up, Al," they answered in unison.

"Give it! I have to find out if we survive!"

"No! OW! Don't _hit_ me!"

Knowing that this was going to continue for awhile, Al wandered out of the kitchen and into the common room where she flopped down on the sofa. The sounds of two bodies wrestling against each other, all grunts and scrabbling at clothes, were occasionally interrupted by the sound of a kitchen appliance falling from the counter top or the fridge door slamming into someone's head, but it didn't disturb her very much. She picked up the book about infectious diseases she'd left behind and started to read, ignoring the racket from the kitchen quite handily.

"Why you little—"

"What're you gonna do with that? It's a butter knife, smeghead—OW."

"Ha!"

"Ohhh, points for creativity." Crash.

"I liked that blender!"

After a minute or so, the door to the Scarecrow's lab creaked open. Jonathan Crane leaned against the door frame, casually peeling a pair of latex gloves off, completely unfazed by the crashes and bangs coming from the kitchen. "What is it this time?"

"_Crime Crush!_ published a piece about us," Al said without looking up from her book. "_All Bad Girls Go to Arkham._"

He stared at her, uncomprehending. "Crime Crush."

She flipped one hand at him dismissively. "It's one of thosegossip magazines for the capes-and-tights set. You know. _Which Villain Would YOU Work For_? quizzes and stuff like that."

"No, I don't know." He said flatly. "And this is cause for a physical altercation?"

Somewhere, something made of glass shattered.

Al finally tore her gaze away from the page in front of her. "The story about us is _bad_. Well...not _bad_, just not true. Mostly. Okay, the _events_ never happened, but the character stuff is eerily accurate."

"And this is cause for a physical altercation?" He repeated, his tone indicating he thought her stupid for bothering to explain.

She shrugged. "Techie likes it, Captain doesn't, they haven't wrestled in awhile. Do they need a better excuse? Besides, Christine Dean—"

"Oh," Crane seemed to experience both a loss of interest and disgust, if the way his upper lip curled was any indication. "Her."

Al gave him a measuring look. "I thought you didn't know about _Crime Crush."_

"I don't_,_" he said. "However, I do know about _her._"

"Journalist crush?" Al asked, eyes narrowing to slits.

Crane's brain seemed to shut down. "Journalist. You...believe she is a journalist."

"Um...isn't she? I mean, minus all the integrity and stuff?"

"Christine Dean does not exist," he said thickly.

From the kitchen, the noises of a struggle continued.

"Ow!" Ding, bang, ting!

"Oooh! Damn it, don't pull my hair unless you _mean_ it!"

"As I understand it," Crane said smoothly, checking his hands for chemical stains. "She's the invention of some think tank somewhere."

"Oh," Al said.

"Ops, stop pulling my hair!"

"Captain—mmph!"

There was one final clatter—a metal mixing bowl on the kitchen floor—a loud and heavy thud, and then...nothing.

Crane fully turned his attention toward the now silent kitchen for the first time since he'd exited his lab. "Do I dare hope one of them impaled herself on a barbeque fork?"

Al smirked. "Guess again."

"They're not..." Alarmed, he crossed the lair and stopped in the kitchen doorway, where he was greeted by a sight that wasn't terribly surprising, given the people involved, but still made him sigh and put a hand over his eyes. "They are."

The Captain and Techie, lying amidst scattered flour and tupperware containers, stopped making out long enough to look up at him. The magazine, or what little was left of it, was long forgotten.

"Oh. Uh..."

"Hi, boss." The Captain climbed off Techie and pulled her up into a seated position.

"If you two are quite through...?"

They giggled a little and brushed some flour off each other. "We are."

"Clean up after yourselves, then prepare the car," he said sternly, gesturing around the kitchen. "I have a full evening planned."

—

_A/N: Okay, I lied. One more chapter after** this** one._


End file.
